{"id":976,"date":"2012-11-12T10:46:11","date_gmt":"2012-11-12T10:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/?p=976"},"modified":"2012-11-12T10:46:11","modified_gmt":"2012-11-12T10:46:11","slug":"pace-of-strategic-renewal-must-keep-in-step-with-pace-of-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/from-our-strategy-implementation-consultants\/pace-of-strategic-renewal-must-keep-in-step-with-pace-of-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Pace of strategic renewal must keep in step with pace of change"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Pace of strategic renewal must keep in step with pace of change: winning by adapting to what\u2019s changing around you.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Extract from Management Innocation eXchange – Gary Hamel:<\/strong><\/p>\n

We live in a world of punctuation with limited equilibrium, where the future is less of an extrapolation of the past and more of a realization of innovation and new ideas. This is a world where adaptability becomes advantage.\u00a0 New combinations of technology, competition, and communications are causing fundamental change in venerable institutions and hundred-year-old business models. The pace of change that we thought unsustainable even 5 years ago is constantly being accelerated making the most important question for any organization is this: are we changing as fast as the world around us?<\/strong> For most organizations, the answer would be no.<\/em><\/p>\n

Adaptability is a fundamental challenge and a potential source of competitive advantage for every organization.\u00a0 As we tackle this challenge, we need to start with a shared definition of adaptability. What, after all, is the distinction between \u201cagile,\u201d \u201cresilient\u201d \u201cflexible,\u201d and \u201cadaptable?\u201d\u00a0 To an extent these terms are interchangeable, and whatever the word, any definition is at least somewhat arbitrary.\u00a0 So instead of consulting the dictionary, let\u2019s get clear about the sort of organizations we are trying to build.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m betting you\u2019d like to work for an organization that . . .<\/em><\/p>\n

– Never takes refuge in denial<\/em>
\n– Is positively discontent<\/em>
\n– Always plays offense and never defense<\/em>
\n– Rushes out to meet the future<\/em>
\n– Is relentlessly optimistic<\/em>
\n– Regularly reinvents itself and its industry<\/em>
\n– Captures more than its fair share of tomorrow\u2019s opportunities<\/em>
\n– Frequently surprises both its customers and competitors<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 . . . and does all this in the absence of a crisis.\u00a0 \u00a0Now that would be an adaptable organization.<\/em><\/p>\n

I like to make a distinction between operational agility, and strategic adaptability.\u00a0 Operational agility implies an ability to respond quickly to shifts in demand or customer preference within the boundaries of an existing business model.\u00a0 A great example of an initiative focused on agility would be Volkswagen Group\u2019s new MQB manufacturing strategy.\u00a0 (Translated into English, Modularer Querbaukasten means Modular Transverse Matrix.)\u00a0 The MQB architecture allows a wide range of vehicles (Audis, Seats, Skodas and VWs) to be produced on a small number of platforms.<\/em><\/p>\n

Strategic adaptability, by contrast, refers to a company\u2019s capacity to reconfigure its underlying business concept, by dramatically rethinking . . .<\/em><\/p>\n

– Its core mission<\/em>
\n– Its primary value proposition<\/em>
\n– The identify and nature of the end customer<\/em>
\n– The method or channels of distribution<\/em>
\n– Its revenue or pricing model<\/em>
\n– The markets or industries in which it competes<\/em>
\n– Its core competencies<\/em>
\n– Its ecosystem of business partners<\/em>
\n-The degree to which it is vertically or horizontally integrated<\/em>
\n– The basic way in which it produces products and services<\/em><\/p>\n

To take an example, we\u2019ve all experienced Amazon\u2019s operational agility\u2014its ability to rapidly assemble our unique order from tens of thousands of SKUs and deliver it to us in day or two.\u00a0 But Amazon is also a case study in strategic adaptability.\u00a0 During its brief history, it has morphed from a Web-based bookseller, to an online retail platform, to a digital media powerhouse, and most recently, to a leader in cloud computing.<\/em><\/p>\n

Amazon is rather unique in that it has changed its business model in the absence of a performance crisis.\u00a0 Usually, major strategic shifts are driven by a financial meltdown, or years of substandard returns.\u00a0 As I\u2019ve said on numerous occasions, deep change in big companies usually happens the same way it happens in poorly governed dictatorships – infrequently, belated, and convulsively; and for the same reason – a top-down authority structure frustrates bottom-up change.\u00a0 All too often, by the time an issue gets big enough to attract the CEO\u2019s attention, whether an opportunity or a threat, it\u2019s too late to do anything but react.\u00a0 A case in point:\u00a0 By the time Google\u2019s top brass roused themselves to do something serious about social media, Facebook had already built a nearly insurmountable lead.\u00a0 In my experience, the vast majority of corporate \u201cchange\u201d programs are \u201ccatch-up\u201d programs.<\/em><\/p>\n

In my view, it shouldn\u2019t require a financial crisis, swinging lay-offs, a clean sweep of the executive suite and a crippled share price to realign a company\u2019s strategy.\u00a0 That\u2019s why we need to change the way we change.\u00a0 Change needs to happen a whole lot faster and a whole lot cheaper than it does now.<\/em><\/p>\n

To put it simply, we\u2019re trying to maximize the following ratio . . .<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
Frequency and amplitude of strategic change<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n
Time, treasure and trauma required to produce that change<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

To borrow from military doctrine, we\u2019re trying to find ways of tightening the \u201cOODA loop\u201d – the time it takes in a dynamic environment to observe, orient, decide an act. \u00a0\u00a0On the battlefield, the army with the shortest OODA loop usually wins.\u00a0 The same holds true in business.\u00a0 If you can make sense of what\u2019s changing more quickly, and redeploy your resources more rapidly, you win.<\/em><\/p>\n

As the pace of change accelerates, so must the pace of strategic renewal.\u00a0 Indeed, one of the most important questions for any enterprise today is this:\u00a0 Are we changing as fast as the world around us?\u00a0 All to often, the answer is no.<\/em><\/p>\n

More …<\/strong> http:\/\/www.managementexchange.com\/blog\/what-adaptability?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pace of strategic renewal must keep in step with pace of change: winning by adapting to what\u2019s changing around you.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[74],"tags":[40,43,41,42,35,11,10,12,90,70,71,72],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=976"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":987,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions\/987"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaordicsolutions.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}